


Lockdown

by Northern_Lady



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alien Threat, Captivity, Domestic Violence, lockdown - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:53:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9645251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_Lady/pseuds/Northern_Lady
Summary: Cameron Mitchell arrives at work at the SGC with a stowaway in the back of his truck. The base is under lock down and this is not turning out to be such a good day. One shot story, maybe, probably.





	

Cameron Mitchell needed to stop and fill his truck with gas if he hoped to make it to work at the SGC that day. The weekend had been boring but relaxing all the same. He pulled into the gas station, pumped his gas, and then went inside the store to see if they had any of those macaroon cookies in the bakery section. He returned to his truck and drove to his usual parking space under Cheyenne Mountain. Cam got out of his truck, grabbed his bag of cookies, and was just about to head into work when a noise from the back of his truck made him stop. 

There was movement under the blue tarp in the back of his truck. Whatever was there was about the right size to be a person. Cam pulled his gun out. 

“Hey, whoever you are, come on out of there,” He said. 

The tarp moved for sure that time and a person came crawling out. It was a woman, maybe thirty years old, and she had a bruise on her face. She wore tight jeans, heels, and low cut blue blouse, making her very clearly unarmed. Cam put down his gun. 

“Who the hell are you?” He asked. He had already gone through one security checkpoint this far. There was no telling who he might have brought into the complex. 

“My name is Anna Griffin. I am sorry. I just needed a ride. I would have asked but I couldn’t risk that you might say no or my husband…” She indicated the bruise on her face. 

“Right,” He said, understanding her situation. “The thing is, this is a military facility where I’ve parked. You don’t have clearance to be here.” 

Anna crossed her arms across her middle in a very worried manner. “Is this Cheyenne Mountain? Because if it is, I have to get out...my husband works here.” 

“Gate’s over there, go if you want,” He pointed at the guard station. 

“I can’t, I don’t know what my husband does in here. He could be at that station for all I know,” Anna argued. 

“If I put you back in my truck and try to leave now after I just checked in, there’s gonna be questions from security, questions and maybe a search of my truck.” Cam said, thinking out loud. 

“I could stay here with your truck until you are ready to leave,” Anna offered. 

“I don’t think so,” Cam said. She could be a spy and this could all be a ruse to access the base. 

Anna burst into tears, “Please...I can’t go back to him. I can’t…” 

Cam sighed. “What’s his name? I know of two men on the base with the name Griffin on their uniform. One works in the lab and one works at the security checkpoint right over there.” 

“Captain Dean Griffin,” She told him. 

“Shit,” Cam muttered. “I’ll just have to bring you inside and let General Landry sort it out. Come on, come with me.” 

Anna followed him towards one of the doors out of the parking garage and into the facility and they had almost reached it when they heard shouting. 

“Anna! Where the hell are you going Anna?” 

Cam turned and found Captain Griffin was heading straight towards them. The man was huge. He was probably six foot five inches tall and had a muscular build. Anna was a small petite woman. She could hardly be an inch taller than five feet and she didn’t look to be able to put up much of a fight at all even if she were brave enough to try. At the moment, Anna looked frightened but somehow resigned to her fate. 

“What the hell are you doing here Anna?” Griffin demanded when he caught up to them. “What are you doing with my wife, Mitchell?” 

Great. Cam was pretty sure he was about to get the crap beaten out of him by an angry jealous husband. 

“I’m here for a job interview,” Anna spoke up before Mitchell could answer the question. 

“A job? Doing what?” Griffin asked, clearly not believing her. 

“I don’t know exactly. A recruiter contacted me about my degree in Botany and I’m to meet with someone who works for General Landry. That’s all I know.” Anna explained rather convincingly. “I’m sorry I ducked out earlier back at the gas station. I thought you wouldn’t want me to work. I saw someone in uniform and hitched a ride.” 

Dean didn’t look fully convinced but he took a step back anyhow. “Good luck then.” And he left them. 

“Somehow, I don’t think he meant that,” Cam said as he opened the door and led Anna inside. 

“I’m sure he didn’t.” Anna agreed. 

“That was some pretty quick thinking back there though,” He commented. He appreciated that she hadn’t thrown him under the bus and run. Instead she had thought of a solution that allowed them to both walk away peacefully. 

Cam had taken her to the stairwell rather than the elevator. He wanted to use the time walking down the stairs to get a little more information. There were two more security checkpoints to get through. He just wanted to know exactly what he was getting himself into before this all went to General Landry. 

“When we get to the next security checkpoint, I’m gonna tell them exactly what happened, alright?” Cam, told her. 

“I expected that,” She said with a nod. 

“Someone will call my superiors and you might be taken in for questioning or you might be escorted straight out but there will be an escort. You won’t have to face him alone,” Cam said. 

“I won’t be able to get very far either,” Anna was a little worried about that. 

“Right, well we’ll figure out something. You have any family you can call to pick you up?” He asked, heading down the stairs ahead of her because he didn’t want to be any later than he already was. 

She shook her head. “No, there’s no one. I never stayed in contact with my foster parents...and Dean doesn’t allow me to have any friends.” 

Cam stopped and turned back to her. “Sounds like you were more of a prisoner than a wife,” He said, not quite able to believe it. 

Anna brushed away a few unwanted tears. “Yeah. Exactly,” She agreed. 

“Does he hit you often?” He asked, indicating the bruise on her face. 

She shrugged, “Depends on what you consider often. It’s not every day if that’s what you mean. Sometimes two or three weeks can go by and everything is fine…and then something just sets him off.” 

He thought about asking her how long she had been married to Dean, and if she had ever tried to leave before but he knew enough about domestic violence issues to know that questions like that might make her feel that he was blaming her for staying, blaming her for her problems. He wasn’t going to ask that, even if he was curious about what might have happened. 

“I had an uncle like that,” Cam said as they made their way down another flight of stairs. “One time he broke my Aunt’s arm because she bought the wrong kind of pickles. Anything could set him off. No one even knew he was like that until she up and divorced him after twenty two years.” 

“I wanted to leave Dean before now. I wouldn’t have stayed twenty years if I could help it,” Anna said a little defensively. 

“Hey, I wasn’t trying to say what you would or wouldn’t do,” He said. “I only meant that sometimes people aren’t what they seem...and it isn’t right.” 

Anna nodded, seeming to have accepted his explanation and she continued to follow him down multiple flights of stairs. 

Cameron Mitchell still didn’t trust Anna Griffin. Her story seemed plausible but it was very possible that this was a larger plot to get her into the base. Her husband would have to be in on it too if that were the case, but it was still possible that he was being played. They’d just have to sort it out at the next checkpoint. He’d probably get in a heap of trouble himself for letting her that far inside the base but it couldn’t be helped. 

They had reached level ten when an alarm began to sound and lights along the stairwell flashes red. Cam stopped moving and Anna followed suit. 

“What does that mean?” Anna asked worriedly. 

“It means the base is under lockdown. No one is supposed to move until we get further orders,” Cam said with a sigh. “This is great. This is just great.” That wasn’t truly the proper procedure. He should be headed to the gate room right then but he couldn’t bring her there and if she really was Captain Griffin’s abused wife, he couldn’t send her back either. 

“How long will it last?” Anna spoke a second time. 

“Who knows? It could be a few minutes it could be hours. It just means something is wrong. We stay put until the situation is under control,” Cam said, sitting down on the stairs. It was driving him crazy to be unable to help with whatever was going on inside. 

Anna followed his lead and sat down on the stairs a few feet away from him. 

“So…” Cam began after half a minute sitting there. “Where did you study botany?” They had to talk about something. It was bad enough that there was some sort of trouble at the base and he wasn’t helping. There was no way he could just sit there in silence and wait it out. 

“Harvard,” Anna said a little absently, seemingly worried about either the alarms or her husband or possibly anything else. 

“Harvard?” He was a little impressed. “You said Captain Griffin didn’t want you to work. All that studying and…?” 

“I know,” She nodded, angry and saddened. “I have a PH.D in Botany and my husband insists that I be a housewife.” 

“What would he have done, if you really had been here for a job interview?” Cam asked her, just trying to understand what might really be going on. 

“As soon as I get home, lock me in like he always does,” She said with a shrug. “It’s the only reason I haven’t left him until today.” 

“Your husband keeps you locked up in your own house?” Cam asked her almost not believing it. “Aren’t there windows you could climb out?” 

“We live on an eleventh floor apartment at the end of a cul de sac off Mulder Street. I can’t exactly climb out a window and no one ever comes to the end the street for anything. The rest of the building is used for storage for his father’s company. There are no neighbors in the whole building I can even shout to for help there. He has a cell phone but I don’t have a phone or internet. One time I wrote a letter asking for help and tried to drop it out the window, just in case someone passing my might find it. I wrapped it up around an old tennis ball and threw it as far as I could...and Dean found it...and he…” 

“What did he do?” Cam asked, concerned. 

“I can’t...I don’t think I can repeat that story.” 

“Can you at least tell how long you been locked up?” He asked her. 

“I’m not sure how long. When we were first married and I had just graduated university he didn’t lock me in. I used to go out a lot. I would do the grocery shopping and talk to people at my favorite shops. I was looking for a job. Dean was very controlling. He didn’t like things I bought or said or wore and he didn’t approve of any of the places I wanted to work. We had been married five months and I accepted a job offer. He had told me he didn’t like the company and that I didn’t need to work but I hadn’t realized how serious he was about that. He was furious. I am pretty sure he broke my jaw and a couple ribs that day but I never got to go to a hospital and find out. I never got to leave the house again unless he went with me.” 

“So that’s how you got away today? You had gone out of the house with him?” 

Anna nodded. “He likes to put me on display. Every Tuesday morning he brings me to breakfast at the dinner across from the gas station you were parked at. Lots of people from the base eat there. It gives him a chance to show everyone that he owns a wife...I wouldn’t ever dress like this if I had a choice or wear so much make-up. Anyway, something in the food at breakfast made him sick. He rushed off to the bathroom and told me to wait for him. I didn’t.” 

“Right, and after he discovered you were missing he just what, went to work as usual?” Cam asked, not sure if her story made sense. 

“Yes,” She said timidly. “That place was half filled with military types. The last thing he would want would be for them to know that his trophy wife ran off. It might make him look bad. He probably asked someone if they had seen me and when they told him I had walked out, what else could he do?” 

“I guess that makes sense,” Cam said. It made sense only if Griffin really was the egotistical control freak she had described him as and he was inclined to believe that her story was true. He had already seen Griffin act like a control freak at the security desk a few times. 

Between the noise of the sirens and the conversation they had been having, Cameron almost didn’t hear the footsteps coming down the stairs until Dean Griffin was almost on top of them. 

“I knew you didn’t have a fucking job interview!” Dean said from behind them. 

Cam was on his feet in instant. Anna stood and looked ready to run but she didn’t move. 

“When the alert sounded, General Landry called the security desk to see why you had checked in Mitchell, and hadn’t made it to the gateroom yet. I figured I knew why. Anna’s not going anywhere with you!” Dean said, angry. 

“Look, it’s not what you think,” Cameron said, trying to calm Dean down. 

“You don’t have any idea what I think!” Dean said, seemingly forgetting that he was shouting at a superior officer. 

“Captain Griffin, you belong back up at the security checkpoint. That’s an order,” Cameron said. 

He could see that Griffin wasn’t happy about it. “Sir, what about my wife?”

“Go back and tell General Landry that I will contact him shortly,” Cameron told him firmly. 

“Yes sir,” the man said and he turned and went back up the stairs. 

He turned to Anna and found she was shaking. At least now he could be pretty sure that she wasn’t a spy trying to sneak into the base. Captain Griffin had been armed and approached from behind him and hadn’t taken advantage of that. If the two of them were a security threat in any way, they could have taken him down right then, They hadn’t, which made him pretty sure that this was a genuine domestic problem and nothing more. That also meant that he could go ahead down to the phone three floors down and try and call General Landry. Maybe Anna would see something she didn’t have clearance to see down there, but there could be lives in danger if he didn’t at least try to help with whatever the situation was. 

“Come on,” He told her, heading down the stairs. 

“But you said we had to stay here,” Anna said a little confused. 

“I lied,” He told her. “You don’t have clearance to be on this base and I don’t know what’s happening down there. I thought it was best to stay put.” 

“Okay. So why are we moving now? What changed?” 

“The General is looking for my help, that’s what,” He said. 

Cam swiped his ID card and they went out the door from the stairwell into an empty corridor. He knew the way down the series of hallways to the phone on the wall. He picked it up and dialed the General. 

“Hello sir. It’s Mitchell. I’m on level seven. What’s going on down there?” 

“What the hell are you doing on seven Mitchell and not down here where you belong?” Landry almost shouted. “Never mind that. Be advised that the gate is open, there have been electrical problems all over the base, and something came through the gate. Whatever it is, it’s on the loose. We have got a team trying to close the gate but we don’t know exactly what came through. You just get your ass down here pronto. Is that understood?” 

“Yes sir,” Cam said, hanging up the phone with a sigh. He turned to Anna. “We got a problem.” 

“What’s going on?” She asked, worried. 

He couldn’t answer that question. He couldn’t tell her what was going on at all. He couldn’t send her back to security and he certainly couldn’t bring her with him. There was a real alien threat on the base and he couldn’t let the safety of one woman stop him from doing his duty. He should have sent her out from the moment he found her in the back of his truck. And yet looking at this pretty and petite woman with a bruise on her face he found he wasn’t sure what his duty even was. There was only one thing left he could do. 

“I’m sorry Anna, you’re gonna have to wait in one of these rooms,” He took her arm and pulled her towards one of the rooms further down the hall. He would have to lock her in. He hated doing it, given how she probably felt about locked doors but he couldn’t have her wandering around the base, he couldn’t take her with him, and he couldn’t send her back. 

She made a minimal effort to pull away from him and then she burst into tears. 

“No...no...don’t do that. No crying,” he protested gently. 

“Please don’t lock the door. I won’t leave this room. I won’t go anywhere. I swear it.” She said, sounding genuinely frightened at the prospect. 

“I don’t have a choice,” He told her sadly. 

They had almost reached the door when a shadow flashed passed them. Cam reacted quickly, instinctively, pushing her into the open door beside them. It was a closet with hardly any space. There were shelves on three sides of them holding janitorial supplies. 

“What was that?” Anna asked him, wide eyed. 

“I don’t exactly know,” He told her truthfully. “Whatever it was, I have to go after it and you have to stay here.” 

“Please don’t go,” Anna said. 

Cam did his best to ignore her and as he moved out of the small space, the door slammed shut of it’s own accord. “What the…?” He tried to open it. Definitely locked. There was no knob on the inside, just a deadbolt on the outside. He thought about shooting at the lock but the doors were pretty thick. It might not be a good idea to use up all his ammunition in this small space trying to get out. Besides, whatever had shut this door could still be outside and waiting as soon as he got out. General Landry knew which level to find him on. When he didn’t show up as expected, they’d send someone for him. As much as it irritated him to simply wait for someone to find him, he couldn’t see any other choice.

“Guess I’m not going anywhere just yet,” He said with a shrug. There was a string hanging in his face and he pulled it, switching on a light. 

In the confined space of the utility closet, Cam had little choice but to stand very close to Anna. Now with the light on, he could see right down her blouse if he dared to look down. He tried not to look down. All he could think about was that the last time he had been in a closet like this with a pretty girl had been in eighth grade. 

The light bulb above them flickered out and Anna responded by moving closer to him with a whimper. Then there was a noise, something scratching on the door to the closet they shared. It was a quiet timid scratching sound like a kitten might make but instead of being at the bottom of the door, the scratching was at the top. 

Anna was no longer pretending to keep her distance from him in the small space. She had moved close enough to hug him and was trembling with fear. 

“Hey…” He put his arms around her, his gun still in one hand. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be fine.” 

“What is that out there? What’s going on?” She said, her voice breaking. 

“Like I said, I don’t know, but I do know, I’m not gonna let you get hurt, okay?” 

“Okay,” She nodded, still not letting go of him. 

After that, everything went quiet. The light was out. The scratching ended. Anna made no move to let go of him. In fact she pulled a little bit closer and it was clear that it had nothing to do with being frighted this time. 

“Anna…” Cam began to say. He couldn’t deny that he liked being this close to her. It had been a long while since he’d been with a woman and she was beautiful and vulnerable and depending on him to protect her. Somehow that made him want her more. “Anna..” He started again but didn’t even know what he was going to say. 

“It’s alright,” She said, reassuringly. “Just, just hold me for a few minutes please. It’s really nice to be near someone who isn’t going to hurt me. It’s been so lonely.” 

Cam sighed. He couldn’t say no. He knew was being a complete pushover and yet he couldn’t say no. Several minutes passed before she reached up and kissed him. Once she did that, all his will to resist her was gone. If Captain Griffin ever found out about this, he was going to kill him, Cam was pretty sure about that. Even knowing that Griffin would probably kill him, he couldn’t stop. Soon he had lifted her off the floor, her legs were wrapped around his waist, her lips against his, her hands all over him. 

They heard voices in the hallway. “The energy signature is this way,” Sam was saying. 

“Be prepared to be blasted with energy,” Teal’c said. “It is how the Galdar defend themselves.” 

Cameron knew he should stop what he was doing with Anna. He should make a noise and let them know where he was but he couldn’t seem to care about being found. All he cared about was how he felt in that moment. 

“We lost it,” Sam said, she had gone past the closet door. 

“Maybe, maybe we should tell them,” Cameron said to Anna, pulling away from her long enough to speak. 

“Oh god, don’t stop Cam…” She pled. 

It was then that he realized, he had never told her his first name. Captain Griffin had called him Mitchell but his first name had never been shared. She was too deep in the throes of passion to realize that she had been discovered and he was too deep into her to truly care. 

“Sam, it’s here!” Daniel was right outside the door. 

It was then that Cam pushed Anna away. He wasn’t going to get caught with his pants literally down. He managed to get his clothes back together just as the door was pulled open. 

“Mitchell?” Carter said. 

Before anyone could say anything more, Cam looked over to see that Anna’s skin was glowing. 

“She is charging!” Teal’c said and he lifted his Zat gun and fired. Anna collapsed to the floor. 

“What the hell just happened?” Cam asked them. 

“I think we could ask you the same thing,” Daniel said. 

“That was an alien shape shifter of the race called Galdar. She was here looking for a mate,” Teal’c explained. 

“So was she dangerous?” Cam was a little concerned about his well being given what had just happened. 

“Not really. They are known to use fear scenarios as well as audio and visual hallucinations to convince a protective male that they are vulnerable. They give birth to insect like offspring who are quite destructive to crops and farmland until they are mature enough to shapeshift and mate. If the mating cycle is interrupted they can release an electrical charge to knock out any threats and escape,” Teal’c explained, picking up Anna from the ground as they all headed back towards the elevator. 

“So… how much of what happened today was a lie?” Cameron asked. “Was the base really under lockdown?” 

“Yes, the base has been under lockdown,” Sam let him know. “As for the rest of the events on our end, we know that you checked into the base at 8AM. Captain Griffin saw you speaking with a woman who looked like his wife and he called General Landry and told him about it. By 8:30 you still hadn’t reported for duty so General Landry sent Captain Griffin to the stairwell where he’d last seen you and report back. He reported that you were still with a woman who looked like his wife. You called the General shortly after that. Then Teal’c realized what was going on and I modified a scanner to look for Galdar energy signatures. We spent the rest of the time looking for you.” 

“I see,” Cam said. He felt sick. It was really difficult not to be horrified and sick given what had just happened. “You know that’s really messed up that any species could just make up an entire fear scenario to take advantage of a man’s chivalrous nature.” 

“Chivalrous?” Daniel asked, a little skeptical. 

“The Galdar do not make up an entire fear scenario,” Teal’c corrected him. “They are not capable of such creative thought. The use a real scenario from the mind of the person they have shifted their shape to become. In essence, they are the person that they pretend to be. However they do enhance that scenario with minor hallucinations.”

“So you’re saying that Anna Griffin really has experienced all the things that the alien told me about?” Cam asked as they stepped off the elevator. 

“Yes, she most definitely has,” Teal’c said. 

Cam caught the elevator door with his hand before it could close. “I gotta go.” He said, stepping back onto the elevator and punching the button for the surface. 

“Cameron wait, you need to go to medical,” Carter was saying but he ignored her and hit the door close button. 

Once at the top he got in his truck, left the base, and headed straight for Mulder Street in the city. He found the building at the end of the cul de sac just like he’d been told. There was a light on at the eleventh floor. The front door to the building wasn’t locked. The elevator didn’t work. Cam took the stairs eleven flights up. He left the stairwell and found a room filled with shelves of office supplies. At the far end of the room was a door with a deadbolt across the outside. Captain Griffin wasn’t home yet. He’d been still at the base when Cam left it. He reached the door, pulled aside the deadbolt and knocked loudly. 

Anna opened the door looking both confused and frightened. She had the same bruise on her face as her alien counterpart did. 

“My name’s Cameron Mitchell. Are you looking for a way out of here?” He asked her. 

She opened the door wider. “How did you know that?” 

“I just happen to be good at finding damsels in distress,” He told her.


End file.
